


Strung, Woven, Snapped, and Tied (To You)

by kaleidobubble



Category: Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (2018)
Genre: Allusions to Red String of Fate, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Healing, Loss, Minor Character Death, No Beta We Die Like RIPeter
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-16 19:42:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,426
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29829939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaleidobubble/pseuds/kaleidobubble
Summary: The strings with which her reality had been carefully strung together still fit perfectly threaded into place, tearing through the fabric of time, space, and reality to just pull them together....The making, breaking, and rebuilding of figurative and literal bonds throughout Gwen Stacy's life.
Relationships: George Stacy & Gwen Stacy, Miles Morales & Gwen Stacy, Miles Morales/Gwen Stacy, Peter Parker & Gwen Stacy
Comments: 4
Kudos: 19





	Strung, Woven, Snapped, and Tied (To You)

**Author's Note:**

> Light allusions to both the Red String of Fate and the song “invisible string” by Taylor Swift

During simpler times, long before Gwen’s entire world had upended itself and flung her upside down, her dad had kept the routine of waking her up early every other weekend and driving them out to Queensbridge Park. 

She knew the park hardly counted as venturing outside of the city, but as her surroundings morphed from sky-rise buildings and brick-laid apartments to budding treetops and long expanses of soft, green grass, Gwen liked to imagine she was leaving for a little while. 

Leaving behind the lonely afternoons spent at home, when her dad was out working late on patrol, and the absence of her mother hung overhead, suffocating the apartment like clouds of dingy grey smog over the New York traffic, for 45 minutes to the middle of nowhere, where she and her dad could eat corn dogs for lunch and fly kites all morning. 

“Make sure those are double knots, kiddo,” he’d said as he watched her string up her kite. Gwen had insisted on doing it herself, asserting that at eight years old, she was a perfectly respectable age to be independently stringing up her own kites, _thank you very much._

Her dad just laughed and ruffled her hair, reminding her, “You’ll want them tight so the strings don't come undone.”

Gwen pulled those strings as tightly as her little fingers could possibly manage, until the twine left imprints on her skin, even tying triple knots in places just to be sure.

She held on as she watched her kite soar overhead, drifting higher and higher until it was nothing but a tiny, bright red splotch dancing in the wind. Her string extended far up above her head, and Gwen liked to imagine she was fishing in the sky, or that her string was tethered to something up there in the clouds. Not just the kite but something bigger, something invisible and intangible. 

What exactly? She wasn’t sure. Her mother maybe? 

She glanced back at her dad who smiled proudly as he stood a few feet behind her, a corndog in each hand, both of them with a bite taken out.

Gwen made an indignant face and stuck out her tongue, blowing a raspberry at him. Her dad grinned at her and blew one back.

Perhaps not so intangible.

Unfortunately, one particularly breezy day in the autumn before 6th grade, a sudden gust of wind tore the kite from Gwen’s grasp, string and all, whisking it up, up, and away until it disappeared behind the clouds. 

She chased after it, watching helplessly as it drifted into oblivion, silently lamenting that even the tightest of knots couldn’t have kept it with her.

Her dad had told her not to worry. That they could easily replace it. But that winter, George Stacy was promoted to Captain, and Gwen never got another kite.

**————**

That same year, a gangly limbed boy with stringy brown hair and thick-rimmed glasses that swallowed up most of his face moved into the vacant apartment down the hall with his aunt. 

When he showed up in her chemistry class, Gwen learned his name was Peter. Awkward and shy, he had a slight stutter, preferring to keep his nose buried in his books even as he walked from class to class, often bumping into trash cans, doors, and people alike. This made him an easy target for Flash Thompson and a quick outcast amongst their classmates.

But when he accidentally bumped into her on the way to his desk and dropped his textbook, already fumbling over an apology, Gwen simply smiled and picked it up for him. 

Shocked that she hadn’t already scoffed and shoved past him, he gave a nervous laugh of thanks, and Gwen noted that he had a nice smile, even with the braces.

She offered him a seat beside her and he offered to help her study for the stoichiometry unit test next week. A fair trade, she figured.

After which they were immediately paired up to make a baking soda and vinegar volcano because, well, it was chemistry class.

So when Flash and his moronic gang of goonies shoved Peter into a locker, she told Flash to go screw himself and stomped on his foot. And when the other girls looked at her funny, whispering amongst themselves when Peter sat down with her and Harry in the cafeteria, she cut them a withering glare to shut them up.

…..

The three of them usually hung out at Harry’s place after school, but on days when Harry was gone with his father, she and Peter grabbed a pizza from Joe’s and studied at the library. 

On one of such days, he told her he had a present for her, and went digging around in his backpack, producing what resembled a sort of friendship bracelet. Except the beads varied strangely in color, seemingly arranged with no particular pattern and jutting out in odd places.

Gwen tilted her brow, looking at Peter questioningly, only to find he was wearing one of his own, and a poorly concealed grin playing at his lips.

She stared between his bracelet and her own with bewildered, scrutinizing eyes until it hit her, and she finally laughed aloud, realizing he’d made friendship bracelets out of the molecular structures of sodium bicarbonate and acetic acid (baking soda and vinegar).

Without the sweet context, it appeared a little horrendous, like something a 5-year-old would string together. But Gwen wore it to school the next day anyway, ignoring the teasing looks from Harry. And when she saw the look on Peter’s face when he noticed it still around her wrist, she decided to wear it again the next day. And the next. And the next.

…..

The night Peter died, Gwen clambered in through her bedroom window and tore off her mask, heaving, blood pounding in her ears, and police sirens screeching down the street below. She paced her room, emotion, and adrenaline pumping violently through her veins, hands threading roughly through her hair, bitter tears burning in her eyes, her head swimming. This was impossible. Impossible, unfair, and all her fault.

Before she could blink, her fist was in the wall.

A sharp snapping sound popped in her ears as her hand went through the concrete. Gwen pulled back, thinking she’d broken her wrist, but found instead that Peter’s bracelet had snapped. Beads spilled off the string and poured onto the carpet, stained with his blood.

In a fit of grief and rage, she whirled around and threw the window back open, ready to fling the broken pieces across Manhattan. But as she held them over her head, her arm weighed heavy and stuck. 

She shoved the pieces under a bookcase instead and tried to forget. 

Harry disappeared soon after, and with the NYPD working double-time to apprehend Spider-Woman, she saw even less of her dad than ever. The hollow ache of loneliness clouded her world once more, and this time, Gwen figured it should stay that way.

**————**

_Thwip and Snap_

_Thwip and Snap_

She never wore bracelets anymore. The only thing ever fastened around her wrists were her web-shooters, the constant tug and give of a taut, white line of web fluid ingrained in her bones.

Ironically enough, Gwen regarded them as the strongest bond she had to her name. With the life she lived, she counted on them to latch to the edge of a skyrise building, catch her out of midair, web up the half-a-dozen creeps aiming the barrel of a gun at her head, and swing her back to the other end of the city before her father could lock her in handcuffs, all within the span of 30 seconds.

With them on, she was in control. She made ties and she broke them, and she was satisfied with that. Gwen liked calling the shots and throwing the punches, and most days, she could even convince herself she liked doing it on her own.

At least until she took a turn through an interdimensional portal and came to learn that the nature surrounding her web-shooters was not, in fact, that of a single thread but in truth, more closely resembled, well...a web.

Whether she liked it or not, her web-shooters, and all that came with them, kept her intricately interconnected with a special bond to some very special people, in ways she never could have possibly fathomed.

Including one special person in particular.

**————**

Miles had insisted on calling it a goober the moment she’d fastened the watch around his wrist and taught him how to open up a portal.

Gwen rolled her eyes, saying that just because Peter called every tech MacGuffin a goober, didn’t mean this had to be. But Miles insisted this was now Official Spiderman Protocol™, and _goober_ was less of a mouthful than _dimensional travel watch_ , so they went with it.

Whatever it was called, Gwen had it on constantly. She saw it almost as an extension of her web-shooters. It tied her to Miles, tied her to them all. It was her means of inter-dimensional transportation, enabling their dimension-hopping, crime-busting, junk-food-filled, weekend hangouts.

And that was all it had been. Until, after a morning of crime-busting, Miles grinned at her over a mouthful of pizza and joked, “Man, we’ve got the coolest friendship bracelets ever!”

If he noticed the split second of apprehension flash behind her eyes, he didn’t say anything, merely letting her recover enough to give a light laugh, and say, “Yeah, I guess we do,” before challenging him to a thumb war over the last pizza slice.

…..

When she got home, Gwen stared at the device around her wrist for a long, hard minute, thumb running over the clasp and eyes flitting to the bookshelf in the corner of her room. 

But after a minute, she pulled her mask back down and zipped out into the city.

**————**

Sometime between all of the spider hijinks, near-death experiences, and pizza, their weekend crime-busting escapades eventually began extending into less death-defying activities.

Like the time Miles invited her to help paint a mural he’d been commissioned for. 

When Gwen argued that her artistic abilities were strictly limited to the musical kind, he’d said, “That's okay, you can just fill in the big spaces. It’ll be like a giant coloring book on a wall.”

Gwen still had her concerns, but it wasn’t like she had any other plans that day. And if she was being entirely honest with herself, there really was nowhere else, and no one else, she would rather be spending her weekend with. So, she said yes anyway.

“But if I irreversibly screw something up and you don’t get paid, you can’t hold me responsible.”

“It’s paint, Gwanda. If you screw up, you just cover it with more paint.”

**…..**

By the time they'd found the right building and set up their supplies, the lively bustle of rush hour traffic was well underway, and a steady breeze whisked through the metropolitan area, billowing Gwen’s hair behind her. She’d started growing it out again, and it now fell at about mid-back.

Gwen dipped her brush into an opened paint can, and in an uncharacteristic moment of clumsiness, dropped it into the pail, fluorescent red paint splashing over her fingers.

“Crap,” she grumbled. At the same time, she turned her back to the wind, and not a moment later her hair had blown over her shoulder, flying over her face and into her mouth. Gwen sputtered and staggered back, arms waving blindly through the air. "Augh!"

She could hear Miles bursting with laughter somewhere behind her, no doubt relishing in the rare sight of his normally, inhumanly graceful best friend getting to be the one awkwardly flailing like an inflatable balloon man for once.

“You okay?” he asked, wheezing between fits of laughter.

“I’m fine,” she bit out as she whipped back around, allowing the breeze to push her hair back out of her face. 

Gwen reached back to tie up her hair when she caught sight of the paint still coating her fingers. There was no way to tie her hair back without dyeing a good section of it bright crimson.

“Hey, Miles?” she called over her shoulder. “Could you do me a favor?”

Setting down his own brush, he jogged over to meet her. “Yeah, what’s up?” 

She held out a hair tie with her non-paint-covered hand. “Can you tie my hair for me?”

Miles' brows furrowed slightly, glancing between the tie and her head, looking uncertain.

“What’s wrong?” she teased. “Scared you’ll give me another haircut?’

“What? No,” Miles scoffed defiantly, before shrinking just a little. “...maybe.”

“It’ll be fine,” she assured him. “Just be careful. These ties tend to break a lot.”

Miles nodded and plucked the offered hair-tie from her hand, circling around her. As he combed gingerly through her hair, fingers slipping between honey-blonde strands, Gwen tried to ignore the way her breath hitched in her chest, paid no mind to the sudden, weightless flutter in her stomach, and attributed the thumping in her ears, sounding an awful lot like a heartbeat, to the rush hour traffic behind them. 

But if she hadn’t been putting so much effort into decidedly _not_ noticing these things, perhaps she would have recognized the slight tremor in Mile’s hands as they smoothed her hair into a ponytail, or realized that the rapid heartbeat echoing in her ears wasn’t entirely her own.

To her mild surprise, both her hair and the tie remained intact. It hung a little loose but it did the job.

Then, Gwen fished her paintbrush out of the bucket and the two of them set back to work.

…..

By the time they'd finished, the city had begun to glow golden under the late afternoon sun. Their cheeks flushed pink with laughter as they stood side by side admiring their work, clothes smattered with a plethora of oranges, pinks, and blues.

"See? That wasn’t so bad, was it?” He grinned, slinging an arm over her shoulder.

Gwen gazed up at the mural. Stretching across the face of a cafe building, it depicted two hands on opposite ends of the wall, each with one end of a thin, red string tied around their pinky finger. The string looped into a graceful heart at the middle, rising like steam from the coffee cup outlined around the front door. 

"Yeah," she conceded, a reluctant smile tugging at the corner of her lips. “That was fun.” Nodding towards the packed-up duffel bag of spray cans, she asked, "Ready to go home?" 

Miles nodded, hoisting the bag over his shoulder. "Yeah, there's just one more place I want to stop by real quick before we head back."

She followed him a few blocks down until they took a turn onto a vaguely familiar-looking plaza. Gwen couldn't put her finger on why until a lone mural of striking greens and blues emerged into view.

Uncle Aaron’s memorial.

The portrait stood every bit as beautiful as she remembered seeing it last, though a few of the finer details were scuffed and faded by weather and time. She suspected that was why they were here.

Gwen hung back for this one, sitting patiently on the concrete as she watched Miles work from afar, carefully touching up the faded corners and sharpening dulled outlines until the entire piece shone like new.

When he finished, Miles stood there, shrouded under the wall’s shadow. The faint murmur of his voice carried over in the wind, and if Gwen strained to listen, she’d easily be able to make out his words.

Instead of tuning in though, she averted her eyes, fixating on a spot in the distance. This conversation wasn't meant for her ears.

Eventually, though, the pull of her spidey-senses nudged her back to attention. The air was quiet now. Miles had stopped talking. But the familiar windstorm of anguish and the all-consuming ache of loss, of feeling so _alone,_ radiated off of him in waves, tugging at her sixth sense.

So Gwen carefully stood up and made her way to his side. Wordlessly, she took his hand, paint-stained and calloused like her own, lacing her fingers between his. This time, she didn’t ask if he was ready to go, knowing he never really would be. 

But she stood there with him until he found the strength to draw a deep breath, gather his things, and with shoulders straightened and his head lifted, just keep on going.

He held onto her hand the entire way home.

**————**

Curled up in a chair at her dining table, Gwen stared contemplatively down into the mug of swirling hot chocolate clutched in her hands. 

Behind her, the click of a doorknob and the patter of footsteps signaled the arrival of company, and her dad stepped into view, ambling across the kitchen to retrieve his coffee mug from the cabinet.

He glanced at her with a fond, if faintly hesitant, smile that widened as he noted her outfit. “You’ve had that thing forever,” he chuckled, good-naturedly.

His teasing remark referred to the slightly oversized hoodie Gwen wore at least once per week. Splattered across the front was a vibrantly colored, stylized depiction of the New York skyline. _It’s A Leap of Faith_ scrawled in bold white graffiti letters below the illustration. 

Gwen rolled her eyes, easily. Forever was a bit of an overstatement. Miles had given it to her... _Was it three years ago now?_ Had it been that long already?

The once deep-violet hue of the fabric was now faded after countless washes into a muted purple, and a few loose threads hung here and there from the seams, but she loved it all the same.

Gwen hid a smirk behind her mug. “What can I say? I’m sentimental.” Fiddling with a thread hanging from the sleeve between her fingers, she absently attempted to pull it loose, but the thread stubbornly refused, intent on staying in one piece.

Her dad chuckled, taking a seat across from her at the table. 

It was a new routine they were slowly relearning after her dad quit the force. This closeness between father and daughter without a wall of icy distance forged by their divided loyalties, duties, and secrets spanning between them.

A steady breeze tousled the branches outside, dancing in the wind outside the apartment window. 

“Pretty good weather for kite flying don’t you think?” her dad observed. “What do you say one of these days, we head back to the park?”

**————**

It was all still here, she realized one day.

Her hair ties lay in a scattered pile on the nightstand, (or if you asked Miles, in a scattered pile throughout the house), her hoodie hung tucked away in the closet, her web-shooters and the goober hidden in the drawer alongside his and the rest of their spider gear.

What was more, a newly strung guitar sat propped in the corner next to her drum set, ballet ribbons traced in ink looped around sunflower stems across the back of her shoulder, and multiple pairs of sneakers sat untied by the door.

The strings with which her reality had been carefully strung together still fit perfectly threaded into place. As if it were meant to be this way all along. As though their destinies were woven and intertwined, tearing through the fabric of time, space, and reality to just pull them together.

Were there clues she’d missed along the way? Surely, there had to be. These things didn't just _happen_ to people. The universe didn’t bend over backward to ensure futures tied themselves up into neat little bows.

For all the fantastical, perception-of-reality-shattering things Gwen had encountered throughout her life, she refused to believe in fairytales. In fate, or luck, or soulmates. Whatever cosmic forces were up there had pulled no punches in driving home the lesson that things often happened for no reason at all. And yet...she was here, wasn’t she? 

“You’re thinking so hard, I can hear you from the other room,” a familiar voice chimed in her ear as a pair of arms encircled her from behind. Miles propped his chin atop her head. ”What’s on your mind?”

Gwen smiled cheekily, spinning around to greet him with a kiss. “Oh, just...string.” 

He pulled back for a quick moment to give her a funny look. “String?”

She nodded, eyes twinkling with mirth, but offered no further explanation.

Miles didn’t ask for one. Instead, he simply lifted her hand to his lips, pressing a gentle kiss to the golden band wrapped around her finger. 

**Author's Note:**

> I've been wanting to experiment with a more abstract, theme-based vignette style and conveniently stumbled upon some Spiderverse clips on youtube which reminded me how much I’ve been missing these two, while simultaneously listening to folklore, and well, this happened.
> 
> Hope ya'll enjoyed! Comments and constructive criticism are always very much appreciated. Thank you so very much for reading <3


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